From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Joe Buck To: pfk@fuchs.offl.uni-jena.de (Frank Klemm) Cc: zack@codesourcery.com (Zack Weinberg), gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Proposal Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 13:38:00 -0000 Message-id: <200109191834.LAA19338@atrus.synopsys.com> References: <20010918211231.A21191@fuchs.offl.uni-jena.de> X-SW-Source: 2001-09/msg00771.html Frank Klemm writes: > Most programmers don't know the standard and are not interested in knowing > the standard, because their (present) job is to solve a problem for one or > two different systems, not for every theoretically possible system, > and the standard supports nearly every stuff which has more than 4 pins ;-) In my case, I have access to the standard, but its relevance to my day-to-day work is limited, since I have to get my code past six different implementations that all get the standard wrong. So "is this correct ISO C or C++" may be interesting, but "do all my targeted compilers get this right, if not, how do I avoid a sea of #ifdefs" is more interesting. > Programming portable, especially with C, takes much more time than > programming for a special system, and the programmers don't have this time. The standard does not tell one how to go about "programming portable", because compiler vendors do not correctly implement the standard. It certainly helps, true, because compiler vendors have at least read the thing and made some effort to comply, often with a long list of caveats (especially in the case of C++). The parts of the standard that most experienced programmers are not familiar with tend also to be the parts of the standard that are implemented incorrectly.